Texas Race Review

Those good old Texans seem to do everything big, big, big. Texas Motor Speedway featured big problems when it hosted its first Winston Cup race three years ago. This year's event, the seventh of the NASCAR 2000 campaign, featured some big milestones and big drama. Adam Petty made his Cup debut while Dale Earnhardt, Jr won his first career Winston Cup race in his twelfth start. Their results in this race mirror the recent performance of these two great racing families and shows how NASCAR has changed.. The Pettys built a racing dynasty long ago that has slipped dramatically in the last ten years. Meanwhile, the Earnhardt clan has attracted more sponsorship money and has quickly built a top notch racing team. Lil E not only won his first race but he totally dominated the event. He cruised to victory by almost 6 seconds and led close to a third of the laps run. While the rookie was running away with this one some of the big guns were struggling. Dale Jarrett was involved in a crash after a nudge by teammate Ricky Rudd and finished thirty- third. Mark Martin finished eleventh but was never a serious contender for the win. Jeff Gordon who has had either bad luck or been uncompetitive so far this season finally put it all together. This time he was uncompetitive and had bad racing luck in the same event! Seventeen drivers swapped the lead twenty times although many of the lead changes took place during green flag pit stops. This was far from a snoozer, however, with lots of racing behind Dale Jr.'s dominant Budweiser Chevy. His amazing win was the second fastest a rookie has visited victory lane trailing only Ron Bouchard's win in his eleventh start in 1981. It was also exactly 21 years and one day after Dale Sr.'s first win at Bristol in 1979. Jeff Burton, Bobby Labonte, Rusty Wallace, and Kevin Lepage rounded out the top five in a race slowed by 12 cautions. In seven races this year we have had a record tying seven different winners. Bobby Labonte lengthened his lead for the season title to 84 points over Mark Martin as the show heads to Martinsville next week.

Pinocchio Award: CBS announcers assured us that the Busch race on saturday WOULD be shown on TNN in it's entirety WHEN the rain delay was over. They never attached an IF to it as in IF the rain delay is short. Shame on you CBS.

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